Listen to News with Tara Benwell - Instructions:
1. Preview the vocabulary and read the gapfill text.
2. Play the news report and try to fill in the blanks.
3. Answer the comprehension questions by writing full sentences.
4. Use the discussion question to write an essay or discuss the story with other students.
5. Click "show Answers" to see the full text.
6. Pretend to be a news anchor by reading each story out loud.

dateline: 31 May 2017

Great White Shark Jumps Onto Fishing Boat

Pre-Listening Vocabulary

taken by surprise: to not be expecting something to happen

leap: to jump

radio (verb): to call for assistance or to share information over a radio

An Australian fisherman was taken by this week when a great white shark leapt out of the air and landed in his fishing boat in New South Wales. The shark the fisherman to his feet and the skin off his arm. The 72-year-old fisherman quickly radioed for help and was taken off his boat where the shark was still thrashing around. The boat was metres long, and the shark was about 2.5 and weighed about 200 kilograms.

Comprehension Questions

How did the shark get on the boat?

What did the man do after the shark landed on his boat?

How did the size of the boat compare to the size of the shark?

Discussion Questions: Does this story remind you of a novel or movie? What do you think would have happened if the man had been unable to radio for help?

show Answershide Answers

Great White Shark Jumps Onto Fishing Boat
An Australian fisherman was taken by surprise this week when a great white shark leapt out of the air and landed in his fishing boat in New South Wales. The shark knocked the fisherman to his feet and tore the skin off his arm. The 72-year-old fisherman quickly radioed for help and was taken off his boat where the shark was still thrashing around. The boat was 4.5 metres long, and the shark was about 2.5 metres and weighed about 200 kilograms.

The shark jumped out of the water and landed on the boat.

The man radioed for help.

The boat was not quite twice as long as the shark.

Written by Tara Benwell for EnglishClub

Tara Benwell is a Canadian freelance writer and editor who specializes in materials and articles for the ELT industry.

5 Comments

I am not sure about what could have happened to the fisherman if he hadn´t been able to radio. Maybe the shark could have killed him or died due to being too much time out of the water.

Tara Benwell says:

It’s a great idea to add images to the news. Unfortunately, It’s not always easy to find free images that go with current events. The great white shark is the deadly one with the big teeth!

Diego says:

It was an interesting story.
I used this web page to study english with my teacher, and what I like is that the stories are recent!

Please post more stories!!

Reza says:

Hi
I have been stuyding english and sometimes have problem if I send my question
do you correct them.

Best Wishes
qazvin Iran

Bijan says:

Dear Tara,

This week news is very interesting for me because I had heard about Whale, Leviathan, alligator and sea cow, but I had never heard about Shark.

I don’t know that are the shark and the whale the same in Farsi (Persian) language or not?

If you show us the images of shark, we will able to know the differences between it and other sea animals like whale better than now.

Suggestion:
I have a suggestion for news reports that you publish each Wednesday kindly.

Please, feel free to say no.

If you present an image for the case like the above case, the students will know the subject well because I know you have a lot of students from every country in the world that, maybe, they have a problem for knowing the shark, the whale, the alligator and so on.

I myself have this problem now that what differences are there among the shark, the whale, the leviathan, the alligator and the sea cow?

I repeat again, please feel free to disregard my suggestion.

Thanks to you for choosing the best news for the students.
Thanks to English Club for creating the best website for the students.